Baseball | Monday, April 3, 2023 9:32 AM (Revised at: Monday, April 3, 2023 9:33 AM)

Kansas City Royals vs Toronto Blue Jays Best Bet: First Four in Kansas City

IMAGO / ZUMA Wire

US Sports Expert

Kansas City Royals vs Toronto Blue Jays Best Bet: Monday, April 3rd

The Kansas City Royals and Toronto Blue Jays will be playing the first game of their four-game set on Monday, and our resident baseball expert Ej Garr has his eyes on an early total. The pitching matchup is set and the weatherman is calling for a beautiful spring day in Kansas City so let’s take it to the diamond and break out the big sticks!

In this article:

Kansas City Royals vs Toronto Blue Jays Preview

April 4, 00:40 (UK time)

The Kansas City Royals will play host to the Toronto Blue Jays for the next four days as we start the first full week of the new baseball campaign. The Royals have yet to taste victory after getting swept by the Twins in their opening three-game series of the new season, and scoring runs has not come so easy for the home team thus far.

The Royals have only scored a total of 11 runs through 3 games, but they do get a favourable matchup when they take on Jose Berrios of the Blue Jays. Berrios fell to the fourth starter in the Jays’ rotation, and his 5.23 ERA from a season ago needs quite the improvement.

Berrios surrendered 29 long balls a season ago, and you would think that if the Jays are so good with him that the odds for this game would not simply be 1.75 for a Jays win on the Moneyline. That is not a line I would recommend at any point of the campaign because you know I am the Mayor of Value City, but I do think we will see an early run in this game.

Call it a gut feeling but with Berrios and Brady Singer getting the nod as the expected starters, I can see the top of one of these two lineups notching one run in the opening frame. I see odds of 1.91 at Marathon for the Over 0.5 1st Inning total, and that is a little more to my liking.

We all know that the top of the Jays’ order is where most of the damage comes from, and with Berrios on the mound, the Royals have a great opportunity to get out of their offensive funk and jump on the board early. Berrios had an issue with first-run innings a season ago, and I expect it to carry over into 2023.

Amazingly, the Blue Jays bats have yet to hit a single home run through their first 3 games of the 2023 campaign. The Blue Jays broke out for 10 runs in their opening-day win over St. Louis, but no one went deep and the bats over the last two days were unexpectedly quiet.

It hasn’t stopped the top 7 in the Jays’ batting order to all be batting over .250, so the hits are coming but the runs have been tough to come by early in the year.